The Purism Librem 5, a crowdfunded Linux-based smartphone, has surpassed the $1 Million milestone

The Librem 5, which is being marketed as "A security and privacy-focused phone", packs a lot of terrific functionality into a smartphone form factor, along with many purely enthusiast hallmark features. The phone runs Free/Libre and Open Source software and a GNU/Linux Operating System, designed to "create an open development utopia, rather than the walled gardens from all other phone providers."

The milestone means they are over ⅔ of the way to their target of $1.5 Million, which admittedly did seem ambitious at the beginning of the road; yet here they are, most of the way there with 2 weeks to go. Todd Weaver, their founder and CEO stated that they're closer than ever to getting to deliver a smartphone that "finally frees us from the shackles of the Android and iOS smartphone duopoly.

The software is "based off Debian and many other upstream projects" and will be "the world's first ever IP-native mobile handset", packing end-to-end decentralised encryption for your phone.

It's definitely a promising-looking device, that offers a fresh perspective on the smartphone market. We've seen privacy-focused devices like the Blackphone before, but this seems much more versatile due to how open it is and how easy it seems to be to run a different Linux distribution on it. If you like the device and want to see it come to life, you can support their crowdfunding campaign– it's only going for another 2 weeks!

What do you guys think? Is this the next phone for you, or do you see a challenge to the Android-iOS duopoly as being futile from birth? Let us know in the comments.